Erica (Eri) Gentry

Erica (Eri) Gentry is a social entrepreneur and researcher. She was born in an Arizona prison town, to the owners of the town's only grocery store. She worked her way up from cashier at the age of 5 to store manager by 13. She left town to study economics at Yale before pivoting to biotechnology.

Eri is a Research Manager at the Palo Alto think tank, the Institute for the Future and co-founder of BioCurious, the world's first hackerspace for biology. She thinks about the future of humanity, behavioral economics, and persuasive technology.

Eri was previously VP of Open Innovation at Scanadu, a Silicon Valley startup bringing medical tools for the people to the people, Community Manager at Genomera, a startup putting crowdsourced clinical trials online, and CEO, cofounder of Livly, a cancer research company on a mission to end killer diseases.

Eri is a proponent of technology democratization, citizen science, and "hacking" medicine. She's written for the White House blog, MAKE Magazine, Techonomy, IEEE Computer, In-Q-Tel and has been a commencement and keynote speaker. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, Forbes, Wired, and The Atlantic, and in the books Biopunk, Regenesis, and The Nature of the Future.

Erica was included on Techonomy's Top Ten list, named a Popular Mechanics' Hometown Hero, and chosen as a White House Champion of Change.

Gentry is cofounder of BioCurious and research manager at the non-profit think tank, Institute for the Future (IFTF), where she studies the future of science, technology, and being human.

In addition to helping start BioCurious, the first hackerspace for biology, she was previously VP of Open Innovation at Scanadu, a Silicon Valley startup bringing medical tools for the people to the people, Community Manager at Genomera, a startup putting crowdsourced clinical trials online, and CEO, cofounder of Livly, a cancer research company on a mission to end killer diseases.

Her work has been shared by the New York Times, Forbes, Wired, The Atlantic, and in the books Biopunk, Regenesis, and The Nature of the Future. She has been named to the Techonomy Top Ten list, called a Popular Mechanics' Hometown Hero and was selected as a White House Champion of Change for Citizen Science.